The Case for Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/10/the_case_for_go.php

<comment><USER2> i'll admit i've been a google fanboy for quite some time (pre-gmail, even).

it does remind me, however, of ebay's meteoric rise during the dotcom boom. i remember my dad driving to me to school everyday and listening to npr. for a year or two, it was this stock and that stock, IPO IPO IPO, unprecedented growth, will the rise ever stop?

and then it did. google is going to run into the same problems that microsoft has right now. they are just going to be too damn big to accomplish much of anything. they are _always_ hiring, and that doesn't seem to be doing much to stave off the 'albatross stage' of a company's life.

<comment><USER3> i dont think the problems with innovation in large companies are caused by the number of employees. I think often the management style at large companies tends to stiffle innovation. If Google can maintain it's atypical managent structure and encourage bottom up innovation and remain willing to take risks on ideas that are not profitable at firet (and unrelated to its corr business) it can remain a leader in innovation.

<comment><USER4> That, sir, is the $20 Billion-dollar question.

If they do, for any serious length of time (I'm talking 20+ years), then they will have been the first to do it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When is the next Startup School? - <AUTHOR>

Will there be another one this year, or is the next one next year? At around what time? <comment><USER2> I'm guessing it'll be in October. That's when it was last year, and they've been having one a year since they started.</comment>


Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/24/paul-graham-steps-back-at-yc-but-dont-expect-him-to-launch-a-startup/ <comment><USER2> I'm very much looking forward to pg's new essays. His pre-YC essays cover a pretty wide spectrum of topics and they were quite influential on me when I read them while still in school.

His essays from the last few years are almost exclusively about startups and I think they're a must-read resource. IMO, they contain pretty much all the ideas that make up YC and going through the program will mostly reinforce these ideas in a very effective way, rather than teach some new secret.

There's much to be said about technology and its impact on society, so I hope we'll see some great new material.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he > and the YC partners are now able to tell "within minutes" whether a startup > will pass muster or not._

This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessment really that small? Or is the quality of selection (due to scaling issues / less time per applicant) nowdays compensated by the effect of YC's reputation?

<comment><USER4> Having interviewed many people over the years (not for an accelerator though), you can easily tell within ten minutes if someone can not pass muster. I have never had anyone who stumbled over the first three questions I asked them, recover on subsequent questions. Nowadays, the only reason I keep interviewing people who stumble over the first three questions is out of politeness.

As I am usually interviewing people for one position, which they need to perform well in, it would take more than ten minutes to get to a yes. But since YC gives sixty or more yeses a batch, and they still win if only a few of them pan out to be a Dropbox or Reddit, than they can probably afford to give a yes in the first ten minutes as well. Because who is a superstar is obvious in the first ten minutes as well. The only question for a superstar beyond the first ten minutes is if they are a fit or not (for example, would the obviously motivated and skilled author of Temple OS, who is marked dead here on HN, be a fit).

<comment><USER5> I have to disagree with the "can easily tell within ten minutes if someone cannot pass muster" part. Interviewing is hard. We tend to make such snap judgments but those judgments reflect our own biases.

I have come to believe over the years that interviewing measures interviewing skills. Test scores measure test taking skills. Success on the job requires success-on-the-job (to coin a phrase) skills. All those things correlate, but the correlation coefficient is not super high. In fact, ignoring those correlations can be an effective strategy to find great people.

<comment><USER6> Aren't "interviewing skills" essential to founders? Isn't a YC interview basically a chance to pitch your company and answer probing questions about your plan? Seems like a pretty fair qualification to me...

<comment><USER7> This is absurdly reductionist.

<comment><USER8> Assume for a moment that I don't know what you mean by 'reductionist'; why is it _wrong?_

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism[#]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism\[#\])

In other words, you by failing to distinguish scaling phenomena (1->N) with a gating criteria (0,1), you are making an attribution error concerning the "essentialness" of your explanatory variable.

For example: co-founders are typically not "interviewed" for the job. But (a) their selection is essential; and (b) if you can find a co-founder, you can find any lesser employee.

It could be argued, that having the ability to "recruit" without formal interview is actually a more essential skill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The entire video of the interview is here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA)

</comment><comment><USER10> Err, Sam Altman is the only beta tester of a YC-company trying to develop a better email client?

Anyone got any more details on this? Is this just an inside joke that I don't get? (Yes I remember the build-better-email-client thing, but actually trying, and using one beta-tester?)

To be honest I no longer think an email client is the problem. Its the lack of contact book, integration with all my devices and just generally tying up my orgnaisation for me - frankly a better email client from now is an AI.

<comment><USER11> What's so strange about that? Personally I think it's a brilliant strategy. It's the logical conclusion of having few users love you, and frankly I can't think of anyone better than Sam Altman to beta test a email app. Once they got him satisfied and hooked, they can easily go for the other big fish in the SF startup scene.

I'm sure they appreciate your two sentence dismissal of something you've never seen and haven't heard more than two sentences about.

<comment><USER10> I am not dismissing _their_ new email client - I am dismissing the idea that a new successful email client is about email. I have four mail clients and god knows how many messaging clients and VoIP in regular use and none of them manage to do the things I need that are related to messaging other human beings - synchronising address books, synchronising who I talked to about what and when, booking appointments between two people without several emails of a phone call, and generally reminding me what I have forgotten .

I struggle to imagine that there is a single email client that will solve this - this is an integration problem - multiple devices, multiple slices of my life.

Executives pay good money, very good money, for PAs to solve these problems. And I get more and more frustrated by the siloes of data (Skype, iPhones call log) that actively make it harder for me to get metadata about what I am doing each day.

so an _email client_ , by my definition of what a single client is, no, does not seem a good idea. but maybe a cross platform synchronising and intelligent solution, that might be worth getting excited about

so that's why I asked if anyone knew anymore. Not a dismissal of their app, a request for more info. And then a strawman of the idea of building a better email client.

I think building a better mousetrap is an outdated when a jungle is waiting out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >You can be surprisingly stupid if you're sufficiently determined

I think one reason we're wrestling with this smart/stupid/success/fail subject is that these words paint with broad brushes. It's not just being smart or stupid, it's what you're smart or stupid about.

For example, I knew an uneducated couple who opened a small clothing store. At first, they naively sold merchandise for less than they paid for it. They calculated the markup on belts by adding $4, then adding $3. When I suggested just adding $7, they got angry and said no, you HAD to add $4 first, or it wouldn't work. I would have been fired for pressing the issue.

Pretty stupid, eh? Maybe. But they were smart, too, about other things. What other things? Some people get MBAs at Harvard and still can't figure it out.

I watched that couple expand into a small chain of clothing stores with an 8-figure annual cash flow, and retire as millionaires.

One can only wonder how long they would have lasted in a YC pitch session. My grandmother used to say, "we're all stupid, we're just stupid about different things." The same could be said of "smart," and I believe success reflects a correctness in this rather delicate dichotomy.

<comment><USER13> I don't quite understand your markup anecdote. Did time pass between the $4 and $3 markups?

<comment><USER12> No, sir. That was all at once. I was expected to stand there with a calculator, add $4 to the wholesale price, then add another $3.

<comment><USER14> Commutativity of addition is not at all an obvious fact and I applaud your erstwhile employers for holding you to a higher standard of rigor.

<comment><USER12> Maybe it's just me, but I find it difficult to conceive of someone to whom, even after discussion and contemplation, (+4+3)=(+7) is not obvious. I suppose there are such people wandering the planet, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the way to do it: "Start with a small, intense fire." Those first customers will make or break you.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Principally, he said, just because someone is intelligent, doesn't mean they > can actually run a business and go out and execute.

> "You can be surprisingly stupid if you're sufficiently determined," he > concluded.

Oh that's nice.

Reminds me of the Simpsons episode when some kid accepts homecoming king with "Thank you for not choosing the popular jock and electing me, your intellectual superior, as homecoming king".

<comment><USER17> Smart engineer/entrepreneurs #1 mistake is thinking that because they are competent in their field(or got good grates at an elite school) that somehow magically translates to competence in business and entrepreneurship. I know and have met quite a few people that are grinding away at or have made products which have serious business challenges that they underestimate or are blind to and predictably fail to overcome. It's kind of sad when you see a product that has taken a high degree of workmanship/skill/and effort to make, but which has no market. Or the flip side, which is an insufficiently differentiated(aka not better enough than what people are already using) product in highly competitive market.

<comment><USER15> You can say the same about artisans who have spent their lives perfecting their craft but don't know how to get the word out about their creations. So many labor in obscurity and their pieces are stunning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article mentions that he was a lightning rod and whatnot as the face of YC. I can't help but wonder whether he took a step back to really evaluate what he was doing with his time after all those blogs ran with the "Paul Graham is a sexist piece of shit blah blah blah" backlash stories a couple months ago.

<comment><USER19> No, Sam and I had already agreed by then that he'd take over. We just hadn't announced it yet. I do remember thinking though that this was going to be one of the things I missed least.

<comment><USER20> Ha! One wonders what Sam's thoughts were...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's interesting that PG will no longer be reviewing applications. I wonder who the 10 people he referenced who do review applications are.

<comment><USER19> [http://ycombinator.com/people.html](http://ycombinator.com/people.html)

<comment><USER22> Is Andrew Mason still involved? He's not on the list.

<comment><USER23> The page only lists full time partners. There are many more part timers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "PAWWWWWL, I gotta startup that corrects misspelled 'Role Tide' Tattoos. WATCHU THINK??"</comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone else sick of reCAPTCHA? - <AUTHOR>

So they're meant to distinguish humans from computers. But 30-40% of the time, the text is unreadable. Or are we just turning into computers? <comment><USER2> I've never really had a problem with reCAPTCHA, I think it's one of the best out there (I hate websites with home-made text captchas that are crazy impossible to read). Also, there's a nice "refresh" button right next to it if you find it too hard to read.

</comment><comment><USER3> i thought one of the best startups i came across last year was Solve Media. that's an enormous problem you're referencing, and not only did their startup solve the problem, but they also created value for brands by advertising within the password boxes

check out the venturebeat writeup from last year: [http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/20/the-latest-ad-frontier- sol...](http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/20/the-latest-ad-frontier-solve-media- lets-you-advertise-on-authentication-tests/)

they also put together a great youtube overview: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-dZvZasg0o>

it's one of those ideas you come across every so often that just makes too much sense. i'd bet they'll have their fair share of competitors soon enough.

<comment><USER4> It won't work. With a finite number of ads you can just store all the answers in a database. Captchas only work because they can be generated on the fly and don't need to be re-used.

Reusing a captcha is like reusing a one-time pad or a condom. Just asking to be broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Part of the point of reCAPTCHA is to crowdsource the digitisation of printed content that conventional OCR couldn't manage.

This is why you occasionally end up with strange things like fractions and foreign characters, that you don't know how to input.

Use the refresh if you can't read it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I may be mistaken, but I've found reCAPTCHA to be often forgiving, sometimes the words are just not clear, and I just type what I think it is. I don't remember ever being incorrect on the reCAPTCHA.

<comment><USER5> reCAPTCHA only knows what one of the words should be, so you only have to get one of the two words right. The other word is being transcribed by crowdsourcing.

<comment><USER7> what he said.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I also would say it is the best one out there. It is easily readable most often for me, and the 'generate new captcha' button responds instantaneously anyway.</comment>


America Needs to Let Go of Its Reverence for the Bachelor's Degree - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/reverence-bachelors-degree/408346/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> For most jobs, why does anyone really need a college education? I was just having this conversation with my co-workers. We are a small startup and are looking for an office manager. Immediately one of them drafted an add and the first thing under requirements was a Bachelors Degree. I asked why? And he just looked at me and said - thats what everyone does.

We had a good conversation and came to an understanding that for this position, a college degree would not help at all. What we need is a person who is smart, hands on, able to learn quickly, with a great and positive personality . A college degree does not guarantee any of that. In fact in my experience, it just breeds 20 year olds with an ego and chip on their shoulders.

Proud to say our add's requirements now just say simply:

\- Smart

\- Motivated

\- Positive atitude that always looks for ways to be more efficient

\- Willing to help out around the office (answer calls, setup appointments, plan events, and handle all the overlooked details that help us succeed!)

\- Willing to learn the ins and outs of the business

And we just got three of the best candidates in a long time - now the problem is we can only hire one.

<comment><USER3> > For most jobs, why does anyone really need a college education?

To get the job.</comment></comment>


Is there a business selling ads on Minecraft? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/07/11/is-there-a-business-selling-ads-on-the-hugely-popular-game-minecraft/

<comment><USER2> I really don't like where this is heading. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect owners of smaller servers will be happier with it ;)</comment></comment>


The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time and the last 10% takes the another 200% - <AUTHOR> http://onista.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/the-first-90-of-a-project-takes-90-of-the-time-and-the-last-10-takes-the-another-200/ <comment><USER2> I think I prefer this adage:

"the first 90 percent of the work is easy, the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent - the attention to detail - makes a good product"

(from <http://www.pacifict.com/Story/>)

</comment><comment><USER3> A friend of mine said something to me one day that really struck me - "I don't think I'm humble enough to be a programmer". He has done programming in the past, he knows what's up, and he knows that you need to put aside your ego and spend just hours figuring out one tiny bug (that ends up being something stupidly obvious in the end), days perfecting the last .1% of your project, and so on. It's humbling. Not everyone can deal with that. It's just as much of an aspect of a good coder as anything else.

</comment><comment><USER4> You will never finish the last 10% of a project. In software you're never more than 90% done. EVER.

<comment><USER5> A completed website is a dead website. A completed application is a dead application. A completed open source project is a dead open source project.

<comment><USER6> There are some programs that can be both in common use and "dead." yes(1), echo(1) and the like come to mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just started programming (always been the biz guy, but thought I might as well learn to hack) and I have a habit of never starting a new module before the current one works without any known bugs. This might take a bit longer, but when I'm done I'm done - and usually there are only minor bugs to be fixed.

Is this not the normal way of doing things, or am I missing something? Or is it simply because I only do simple stuff? (currently doing a website with user profiles, different sorts of to-do lists, ratings, gannt charts, a blog tool, calendar, and some ajax thrown in for the hell of it)

Where, in your experience, does this last unseen mountain of work come from? Am I about to be hit hard with something unexpected?

<comment><USER8> Yes, your approach is good and should work pretty well. However, in my academic experience, the perception of "done" can be deceptive, even for a well defined problem. The purpose of the saying is to make people wary of thinking they are done.

Similarly, it is said that the point of debugging is to find bugs, not to remove all bugs. Again, the idea is if you think you've found all the bugs, you're probably wrong.

However, you may well be one of the lucky individuals who can understand the entirity of the program in one go. And, it is good to attempt to do so, even if you usually can't. Thinking through the entire logic of my programs helps a lot as I debug.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the real problem in this case is being unwilling to cut features, and having too large of an initial feature set.

The last 10% always takes a long time, but it sounds like things are getting out of hand here.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another 200% of what? The "90%" already taken? If you work on something for 90 hours, then for another 180 hours, that 90 hours was actually "the first 33%," so I guess I don't understand why he doesn't just refer to it as such. But then we wouldn't have a blog post (with wonderful the grammar).</comment>


The void of undefined in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://shapeshed.com/the-void-of-undefined-in-javascript/

<comment><USER2> The correct solution for this problem of undefined is to do nothing!

If someone redefined undefined and it causes a problem - too bad! Some problems are just too stupid to worry about.

<comment><USER3> indeed ... I'm surprised no one has mentioned "wat" yet :P [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)

<comment><USER4> Absolutely brilliant/hilarious video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _Let 's say someone is using your library within that function and you > reference undefined. You get the string "oops". Oops indeed._

That is incorrect. It might be correct if the word 'library' was replaced by 'code snippet' to indicate a copy-and-paste-of-your-code issue. But if you've created a _library_ then your functions are over in some other file, where `typeof undefined === "undefined"`.

The proper attitude here is the same as the Python attitude towards not having `private` attributes: "If some other programmers want to do something crazy with my code, that's their prerogative. If it blows up in their faces, that's their problem."

<comment><USER6> Even if it was in the same file, as long as it's in a different function it'll work.

If `undefined` is an argument name, it's only bound inside that function and nowhere else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the cult of ' _oh my god you can redefine_ _undefined_ _'_ hilarious. Yes, you can. You can also redefine __Array __, __Object __, and so on. If you 're writing a script to intentionally disrupt a system, __for(;;); __will also do. This doesn 't happen in sane environments, so it really isn't a problem.

The Crockford quote (characteristically dogmatic, to the effect of ' _void means something different in JS than in Java, so AVOID VOID!_ ') is also a kicker.

</comment><comment><USER8> > […] if you throw your scripts out there on the web you've got to expect that > somewhere, at some time someone is going to do it […]

And then it will be that persons' problem. Their code would be wrong, not mine. By not making sure my code works when undefined is broken, I would be helping them to realize they have a possible bug in their codebase and that they need to fix it.

<comment><USER9> This is one among many serious, and unjustifiable, flaws with JavaScript. It's the kind of issue that should never even arise with anyone's code in the first place, regardless of who wrote the code, because the language and its implementations should not allow it to happen.

And, yes, we know that other languages have flaws, too. But aside from perhaps PHP, the flaws in other languages are almost never as outright stupid as they are with JavaScript.

<comment><USER10> > _And, yes, we know that other languages have flaws, too. But aside from > perhaps PHP, the flaws in other languages are almost never as outright > stupid as they are with JavaScript._

Citation needed. There are tons of languages with huge fucking flaws to blow your code and kick your dog.

PHP and Javascript are relatively harmless (if a little brain damaged). At least you don't get buffer overflows using them.

You think C++ has a better design, for example? People forgot how bad Python used to be, pre 2.4?

<comment><USER11> No, the OP was correct - other languages have flaws but nowhere near the level of Javascript. You pick on C++ which is a design by committee monstrosity but it is nowhere near as braindead as Javascript. I mean, C++ allows you to include other code! C++ doesn't allow you to redefine the constants of the language. Actually, C++ _has_ constants!

Nope, as much as I like to rail against the sins of C++, it is a paragon of design virtue next to JS. I've been programming for three decades now and JS is the worst language I have ever seen. I use JS a lot in my day job and it has parts I really like (object constants, for example) but really, as a piece of language design it is really the pits.

<comment><USER12> #define ?

<comment><USER9> That's not really a C++ construct, as much as it is a hold-over from C, kept around to retain compatibility with existing code.

If you're writing new C++ code, you're in no way forced to use it. You can use constants or inline functions to achieve the same result in almost all cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't this whole issue just a minor version of the problem Ruby has with monkeypatching? The fact that a Ruby guy can define `method_missing` to allow for bare strings shows how Ruby is cool (though you should never do that), but the fact that you can redefine `undefined` in JS shows how JS is stupid (despite the fact that you should never do that). I don't understand the dichotomy.

<comment><USER14> People don't typically inject frequently changing, unvetted advertising code into their ruby runtimes. Generally, the most frequently that the ruby code in your runtime changes is each deploy.

<comment><USER13> Granted, but that's an incidental problem, not one arising from JS being a bad language. Also, I highly doubt there is much advertising code that changes the value of "undefined" \- certainly not any I've encountered.

This really boils down to "my code won't act the same way if I give unfettered access to my environment to unvetted code" which is true in almost any situation. If you're having problems because "undefined" is being redefined, you have bigger and more fundamental problems. There are a lot of bad things about JS, but this is not one of them - its overly nitpicky and completely unfair. This same capability (of being able to redefine almost anything) is lauded as part of Ruby, but when it could theoretically cause any easy-to- avoid problem in JS, it's just more proof that JS is a shitty language.

Sorry if I'm coming across as combative - I don't mean to. I just think this whole snide criticism of JS for every little thing is silly and unhelpful, and has more to do with a superiority complex than actual technical issues.

<comment><USER15> In general you are correct, redefinition in Ruby can be abused, but it isn't so easy to abuse 'nil' in Ruby as it is to abuse 'undefined' in Javascript.

In Ruby, nil, is a keyword so you can't assign to it nor can you use it as a method parameter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tend to read these sorts of articles as "don't do stupid things". Who in their right mind would name an argument undefined? (or use a library by someone who would do so) The operative sentence in the article to me is "can be avoid if you understand how it works". On an unrelated note I'm not sure if that's a typo or a pun.

</comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone ever seen "undefined" be redefined, on one of their professional projects?

<comment><USER18> A quick search of github gave this line:

       var undefined= undefined;

Which has a comment explaining that it is an optimisation based on the idea that "defined variables are faster than not-defined ones" \- I have no idea if that is true or not.

[https://github.com/Searle/mothello/blob/c31fc57bedd666e9da34...](https://github.com/Searle/mothello/blob/c31fc57bedd666e9da34c12d2f5068af80964899/v2/core.js)

I wonder if this counts as redefining undefined though!

The comment also suggests that jQuery does this, which seems to be true as explained in this link:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7141106/undefined- variabl...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7141106/undefined-variable-in- jquery-code)

"undefined in the jQuery code is actually an undefined parameter of a function wrapping the whole code"

Presumably if you have your own local undefined that is guaranteed to be undefined then you are safe from someone else setting it to be something silly.

Edit: The jQuery sources are all wrapped in:

       (function( window, undefined ) {
       ...
       })(window);

<comment><USER19> If you have to guard against someone doing something silly, then you are never safe. The problem is not the language at that point, it's the environment.

<comment><USER20> To err is human -- you're never safe. Even if we say people are the root of the problem, fixing their fundamentally imperfect nature is currently beyond the capabilities of science, whereas doing something like enforcing constants at a language level is not. Education will reduce, but not eliminate, the chance of making such a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> jQuery does it right:

        (function( window, undefined ) {
            // ...
        })( window );

</comment><comment><USER22> There are a lot of potential pitfalls in coding JavaScript. Redefining undefined is only one of many.

One of the nice things about JavaScript is that it gives you the ability to accomplish things many different ways, but if someone uses that to shoot themselves in the foot then that is something they need to correct.

</comment><comment><USER23> > _If you have done more than one day 's programming in any language you will > realise that this is an important building block for programmers._

I guess my _any_ languages are different. Never realized it's importain in haskell (except it is ⊥).

<comment><USER24> Exactly. There is no void in hardware, for example. Also, there's no bottom either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The worst thing about undefined is not its mutability but that it exists in the first place. Trying to retrieve a non-existent attribute should throw an error by default, not fail silently.</comment>


How Women Mentors Make a Difference in Engineering - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/women-mentors-engineering/527625/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Studies about education are famously not done well and are hard to replicate (this is true of other fields as well). Instead of having a psychologist who has never done engineering do the study, have actual engineers. Different people respond differently. Engineering is one of those fields that if you screw up, many, many people can die so it takes a certain kind of personality and I believe it is someone who is very passionate about doing it.

The same is true with medicine.

<comment><USER3> The claim that an engineer would run this study better is baseless. Most CS faculty I know do not have the experience necessary to plan and run a well thought out randomized controlled experiment with human subjects. There is definitely some good work done by CS professors on CS education but in general a Psych faculty member will be better equipped to run a study such as the one cited.

<comment><USER2> The article was not referring to CS but engineering. EE, ME, Civil, Chem, Aero, Industrial,

[http://engineering.illinois.edu/academics/rankings.html](http://engineering.illinois.edu/academics/rankings.html)

My EE profs at Illinois were capable to run studies and they understand the rigors of the domain which a psychologist would not understand.

The study is in a very emotional area and the findings get lots of publicity advancing careers but making it more likely the results are biased.

I have also worked in CS and studied it so I can say it is not engineering.

<comment><USER3> My mistake, CS is in the school of engineering at my institution. My point stands. A social science researcher is better equipped to run this study than an engineering researcher.

> My EE profs at Illinois were capable to run studies and they understand the > rigors of the domain which a psychologist would not understand.

This is silly. Switch EE and Psychology and you can say the same thing. "EE faculty on average don't understand the human elements and how to control for them well enough to run the study."

> The study is in a very emotional area and the findings get lots of publicity > advancing careers but making it more likely the results are biased.

All of academia.

Let's break out of the "STEM faculty can do everyone else's jobs better than them" mentality. It is hurting our field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Often, science is messy and things don't turn out neatly," Dasgupta says. But in this study, "it was very gratifying how clean the results were."

This is an unfortunate choice of words in the age of p-hacking and publication bias.

</comment><comment><USER5> Part of the problem here, which the article doesn't quite reach, is that the possible pool of mentors is growing but those women are themselves lacking in the confidence they need to become mentors. Encourage your female engineering senior managers and leaders to knowing that they are respected and capable of being role models and mentors to others if they choose!

<comment><USER6> At my current company everyone at a manager or above level becomes a career advisor for several younger resources. Every advisor has to go through HR training to do this and they are expected to spend a not insignificant amount of time each year helping each advisee. Also every non-manager has a career advisor.

I believe that this system really helps push people to focus on helping others in the organization and really making them focus on how others can be successful even if their path wouldn't be the same as theirs. Another aspect of the current system is the advisees can request to have different advisors if they feel others are better suited to understanding their background and goals.

I like to naively think that this system benefits both the advisor and advisee and both can get a tremendous benefit from the relationship. Overall having a mentor and mentoring others is a great tool for personal and professional growth. On several occasions I have had to really think about how to discuss options with my advisees who have different cultural backgrounds from myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My female engineer friends tell me that female mentors work well for them, but that female bosses often don't.

They all cite some sort of attitude where the boss had to gut it out in an unfair sexist world, and don't have much sympathy.

Anecdotal of course, but if true to any significant measure, would make mentors even more important.

<comment><USER8> You would think that people who experienced sexism would be more likely to be inclined to help out...

<comment><USER9> My experience is that the opposite is often true: quite a number of those who overcame <x> tend to have the least sympathy for people struggling with <x>.

I've met ex-poor people who attribute their success to simple 'trying harder' than other poor people. I've met socially successful people who attribute it to learning 'a few simple tricks' and 'getting out of the comfort zone'. I've met ex-depressed people proclaim that if only others would meditate and/or believe in themselves it would solve all their negative feelings. I've met gays who argued that if only these sexually-confused individuals would let themselves be themselves, and move somewhere more free if need be, their struggle would be over. I've met Christians who attribute their new-found wholesomeness to simple being more repentant than everyone else in church.

In each of these cases, the conclusion was that 'these people', whether poor, socially anxious, depressed, gay or in existential crises, are just not trying hard enough (lazy).

In fact, I'd go as far as claiming that, considering myself someone who has had a decent breadth and depth of experience with these groups, easily more than 50% of the ex-somethings I've met are more on the side of judging their ex-peers instead of supporting them.

I'm sure there's fascinating research in this area. I catch myself doing similar things and while I have some theories I can't fully explain why I do it. Protecting/polishing my ego? Keeping some clean narrative and sense of progression in my head?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I think more women, and underrepresented groups in general, is a good idea. However I am against treating them any differently in a professional setting, for better or worse.

This means, if you have a standard for defining someone is not compliant or aligned with the company, it should be the same for everyone.

<comment><USER6> To me, your comment is very much in line with the core tenet of equality which would be that we should strive to treat everyone the same regardless of gender or race. As such I am not sure why you are being down voted without people leaving comments.

<comment><USER11> It's because such comments break the HN guidelines by treading into classic flamewar territory with nothing genuinely new to say. This ruins threads and degrades the site. A few people get all excited (perhaps 0.1% because they've never seen this before and 99.9% who just love repeating it) while the rest of us keel over from tedium. Since HN's mandate is to gratify intellectual curiosity, that violates it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER12> Ah classic dang! Abusing your mod powers to punish and down talk anyone who questions your narrative. The comment in question is absolutely on topic and relevant. You just don't like it so claim it's against "site policy". It's ridiculous that you don't allow debate on these topics.

And yes, I know I'm perma-banned for not being feminist enough for you. I just wanted to point out your systematic pushing of a political agenda to those who dare browse with show dead.

<comment><USER11> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110004)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Curious about the Hacker News readership demographic? - <AUTHOR> What are your pronouns? What city? What age?<p>I'm he/him, San Francisco, 39 <comment><USER2> My pronouns? What does that question mean?

<comment><USER3> likely to know gender but there are genderless pronouns.</comment></comment>


A Study on Fats That Doesn't Fit the Story Line - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/upshot/a-study-on-fats-that-doesnt-fit-the-story-line.html <comment><USER2> Recent related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11492030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11492030)</comment>


Google TechTalk: Closures for Java - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4051253555018153503 <comment><USER2> This would be a big improvement. I hope it happens soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome....</comment>


Alan Kay on Programming and Scaling [presentation] - <AUTHOR> http://tele-task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/

<comment><USER2> HN should move the search box to the top of the page.

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=tel...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=tele- task.de&start=0)</comment>


Will Larry Ellison buy Novell? - <AUTHOR> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2010/03/will-larry-ellison-buy-novell.html

<comment><USER2> In the operating system business? AT&T Unix?

Didn't they just buy Sun?

</comment><comment><USER3> Technically there is still an on-going lawsuit with Novell and SCO, about who owns UNIX.

</comment><comment><USER4> Did the poster confuse the Elliot Associates with Ellison? :)</comment>


Flight MH370: Passengers' Mobile Phones Ring But Not Answered - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-passengers-mobile-phones-ring-not-answered-1439560 The plane turned around? http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/oil-slicks-malaysia-airlines-plane-crash-site-terrorism-article-1.1715004 …
but the transponder data does not show that!
And now phones on that plane are ringing! Mystery deepens ? <comment><USER2> Of course it depends upon the systems in play in the countries involved but...

If a phone was last on record as "roaming" in a different country one would expect a delay in establishing it's current status and that the home network provider would play a ring tone while it attempted a connection. It is unlikely that there is anything more to read into this.</comment>


Inside the Sony Hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/users/2015/11/sony_employees_on_the_hack_one_year_later.single.html <comment><USER2> This is very different than the Target hack -- we have become numb to credit card focused hacks -- we all know the drill, we just get a new card in the mail a few days later, and the banks are pretty good at detecting fraud: [http://www.nasdaq.com/article/credit-card-fraud-and-id- theft...](http://www.nasdaq.com/article/credit-card-fraud-and-id-theft- statistics-cm520388)

To me both Sony and Ashley Madison are part of a very different type of hack, that we are just starting to understand.

They leak massive amounts of personal information, and this personal information can and does ruin lives. This article outlines much of the emotional turmoil that Sony employees went through, and in Ashley Madison, there were suicides as a result:

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/08/technology/ashley-madison- su...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/08/technology/ashley-madison-suicide/)

You can rotate your credit card number, but rotating your real life is not possible.

I don't see a way out. Going anonymous might be possible for living on the internet, but you cannot be anonymous to your employer.

<comment><USER3> I'm very interesting in maintaining security and privacy while still being able to use the internet, so please don't interpret this comment as a dismissal of your concerns. I share your concerns 100%.

But I hate the phrase "ruin lives". How are lives ruined? Bad things happen to people all the time, and their lives continue. It's really a poor way to talk about these issues.

<comment><USER4> _But I hate the phrase "ruin lives". How are lives ruined? Bad things happen to people all the time, and their lives continue. It's really a poor way to talk about these issues._

Leaking of your social security number can result in your credit rating being ruined for years. This will leave you unable to take our a mortgage, buy a car, etc. etc. In the Ashley Madison hack, details of people being unfaithful in their marriages was exposed, which has led to divorce and even suicide.

If that doesn't count as a "ruined life", what does?

<comment><USER3> Those are all major problems. I think that "ruined life" is crap Newspeak. It's like "boots on the ground", "inner-city", "financial crisis", "cloud", and a billion examples from the "business world". These phrases prevent thought and communication rather than facilitate it.

Aside from that, people will respond to those problems in a myriad of ways. Almost all of them keep living and return to their baseline emotional state again. Using the phrase "ruined life" ignores human resiliency which is very powerful. It makes us sound like teenagers experiencing our first heartbreak.

<comment><USER4> So you're saying that we shouldn't use "ruined life" in any circumstances? I'm not really sure what the appeal is to here - that we should only ever use clinical and unemotional words when describing things? Seems like a net loss to me. If I think my life has been ruined why can't I say that?

<comment><USER3> Of course you should use it when you think its appropriate. For example, if you left your boots on the ground, it would be appropriate to describe them as "boots on the ground". If you are talking about the historic center of a city, call it the "inner-city".

But for the examples you gave upthread, it would be more accurate and useful to say "ruined credit" (and in that case, it's really only for some years) or "ruined marriage".

If someone spent their life in prison and lost their mind due to a wrongful conviction, I'd call that a "ruined life". And if you feel your life is ruined, you should say it.

But I read the phrase "ruined life" and I really don't think it communicates anything except for "bad thing". So why not just express the value judgment and say "That's bad and here's why" rather than trying to describe a life as "ruined"? It's another phrase that has lost whatever meaning it once had.

<comment><USER5> I think a lot of the people who have had identify fraud happen to them would say their life has been ruined. This seems like a silly argument on whether or not their lives have been "really ruined" or not when we get the point. Yes, it is a phrase, maybe it is overused, but does it really matter?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rb: A Redis parallelization toolkit for Python - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getsentry.com/2015/08/20/rb-redis-parallelization-toolkit.html <comment><USER2> Armin from Sentry here.

If you have any questions about the library or the whole problem in general feel free to shoot questions my way.

<comment><USER3> So why not just use:

        gevent.joinall([gevent.spawn(call_get, get_client_for_key(key), key) for key in keys])

gevent uses epoll/kqueue in the background as well; as far as I know, no threads are spawned or locked. Is there some kind of fancy scheduling going on in rb?

<comment><USER2> We are not using gevent anywhere and we can't really because of it not working well for the majority of our work. The redis pyrhon library only works with gevent if you monkey patch everything and that would be very problematic for us.

Lastly that does not support pipelining still, something that rb does for you n</comment></comment></comment>


Perl 6 makes all of Lisp's mistakes, then sets itself on fire - <AUTHOR> http://www.elfsternberg.com/2016/04/02/1741/ <comment><USER2> This post seems to be written by a highly intelligent person, but I fear it comes off as reactionary. They're picking on an example from the slideshow that was posted a few days ago, I believe, and then saying, "This is stupid!"

I would rather have someone take a feature from a very new language, and rather than be reactionary, post about how they felt when they first heard of this feature, ("Weird!", "Wild!" "UH-OH", and then go, "Well, hey, let's see what's it's good for", and try to use the feature. Then, and only then, it would be interesting to read their response of the feature: "I first thought this, but in actuality it saved me a lot of time/came in handy/saved me a ton of lines of code, and hey, it didn't affect anyone else's code!" Or, even, "Yup, just what I expected - yadda yadda - and HERE'S HOW I'D IMPROVE THIS FEATURE SO IT'S MORE OF THE AWESOME"

Then we have something to talk about.

$0.02 and all. Saves a pissing match.

<comment><USER3> He's a highly intelligent person who has been around the block a few times - I'm not exactly sure how old Elf Sternberg is, but he had already been a net.luminary for some time back when I first discovered usenet. He's not saying "this is stupid" because it's new and different; he's saying "this is stupid" because he's seen this particular decision made before, and he has a pretty good idea where the story is going to go from here.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Because people build bridges and ladders out of rope, Perl has a history of giving the programmers plenty of rope to hang themselves. This is construed as a feature.

The good news is that even if such craziness exists in other people's code, it's lexically scoped, and does not contaminate your own code. I'm just enjoying the fact that even Perl 6's detractors realize how powerful the language is.</comment>


Livestream: A Conversation With Elon Musk at 1PM EST - <AUTHOR> http://www.texastribune.org/2015/01/13/livestream-interview-with-elon-musk/

<comment><USER2> Sadly the video stream has dropped out for me. Is anyone else encountering this?

<comment><USER3> Yes.

As of 1:52 ET, laggy video and NO audio.

Someone at Livestream reading this, please get on it. Thanks

Edit:

2:01 PM ET

Try now. WORKS !!

<comment><USER4> Still not working for me. I guess I'll try this afternoon... HN, Reddit, etc. traffic I guess...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Word is @elonmusk's conversation with @evanasmith is running a little late. Stay tuned! [http://trib.it/1u3hWGR"](http://trib.it/1u3hWGR")

[https://twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/555789541814988800](https://twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/555789541814988800)

Edit: It's live, as of 1:35ish!

</comment><comment><USER5> 1:15 ET and not started. "Please wait for the lifestream to begin"

</comment><comment><USER6> Via reddit: [https://twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/555789541814988800](https://twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/555789541814988800) "Word is @elonmusk's conversation with @evanasmith is running a little late. Stay tuned! [http://trib.it/1u3hWGR"](http://trib.it/1u3hWGR")

</comment><comment><USER7> 1:06 EST here and it hasn't started. "Please wait for the livestream to begin"

<comment><USER8> Getting the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess this is a no show!! Too bad, I was looking forward to hearing him speak. EDIT: I can see them but can't hear them. Anyone else in the same boat? Anyone know how we can hear him too?

</comment><comment><USER10> and we're off!

..this MC is intense</comment>


TetraScience's (YC S15) Internet-Of-Instruments Could Supercharge Research - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/14/tetrasciences-internet-of-instruments-could-supercharge-research/?utm_campaign=naytev&utm_content=55cde98ee4b0eb7eb8d191ba

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

This is Salvatore (Sal) from TetraScience. Our team wants to share with you the news that we are on TC.

Happy to answer any question.

Sal

</comment><comment><USER2> Very excited to see this - I had a chance to see their early product, and was impressed by its flexibility and their approach to making it secure.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "They assured me they have several layers of security, so the results can't > be hacked into."

That's what they all say.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love some suggestions on how to make our system more secure!!

Sal</comment></comment>


They Hack Because They Can - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/06/they-hack-because-they-can/ <comment><USER2> > "a Saudi Arabian actor who is also responsible for several SQL injection > compromises of databases in foreign countries over the past several years > and has demonstrated an interest in the 'Internet of Things' by posting > ompromises/instructions on compromising light bulbs and car radios, in > addition to the road signs."

I bet you they searched far and wide to find someone from that part of the world so they can link it with 9/11 somehow. Everything is about "terrorism". No link to terrorism = no contracts = no business coming their way.

There could be a bored Romanian teenager encrypting everyone's Documents folders, controlling bots in Europe and US, but well, that doesn't play into the narrative so they find someone from Saudi Arabia interested in the "Internet of Things". [Note: talking about the CIS report not, not a Krebs report or article -- [http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/malici...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/malicious_cyber_actor_targeting_eletronic_road_signs.pdf)]

I guess CIS is in the business of drumming up scary cyber boogeyman stories. Let's see its scope ( from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Internet_Security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Internet_Security) ) -- "enhance the cyber security readiness and response of public and private sector entities, with a commitment to excellence through collaboration". Yap, the scarier the boogeyman in the bushes the more business coming its way.

<comment><USER3> >I bet you they searched far and wide to find someone from that part of the world so they can link it with 9/11 somehow. Everything is about "terrorism". No link to terrorism = no contracts = no business coming their way.

Where did they say anything about 9/11? Where did they say anything about terrorism? There's not one mention or implication of terrorism anywhere.

<comment><USER2> > There's not one mention or implication of terrorism anywhere.

That is why you have to read between the lines.

Anyway, in this case, reading between the lines and having at least a mild interest in cybercrime, you'd realize that most cybercriminals, and what public and press consider "hackers" don't come from Saudi Arabia or Middle East. The fact that in this "Cyber Alert" by CIS they picked a Saudi Arabian "malicious actor" attacking our road signs is probably not a coincidence. Well it could be, but I suspect it is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most organizations, especially government, have a remarkable inability to man up, say "we fucked up" and take responsibility for their mistakes.

Reports like this emerge, in an attempt to obscure the truth with sheer volume.

<comment><USER5> Instead they are apparently blaming it on the release of Watch_Dogs (a gta style game with a focus around hacking)

<comment><USER6> Ah yes, blame the media or culture. My favorite false flag approach.</comment></comment></comment>


Slack down? - <AUTHOR> Slack down at our office anyone else having issues. Looks like it's IRC fallback time... <comment><USER2> Yes.

[https://status.slack.com/2018-08/8bbc893ea50d37d9](https://status.slack.com/2018-08/8bbc893ea50d37d9)

[https://twitter.com/SlackStatus/status/1030128896362958849](https://twitter.com/SlackStatus/status/1030128896362958849)

</comment><comment><USER3> HN is quickly becoming a universal status monitor for any major website. First place I came to go and check.

<comment><USER4> It's funny because it's true.

That said: is there a status aggregator anywhere?

<comment><USER5> Down Detector: [http://downdetector.com/status/slack](http://downdetector.com/status/slack)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes. Since you (and I) can't be as productive while Slack is down, here's some fun non-work reading:

1) Story of Paul Le Roux: Former programmer, former criminal cartel boss and informant to the US DEA. [https://magazine.atavist.com/the- mastermind](https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind)

2) How Anna Delvey Tricked New York's Party People [https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-anna-delvey-tricked- new-y...](https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new- york.html)

3) Seven Days of Heroin: This Is What An Epidemic Looks Like [https://www.cincinnati.com/pages/interactives/seven-days- of-...](https://www.cincinnati.com/pages/interactives/seven-days-of-heroin- epidemic-cincinnati/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes. Their status page caught up a few minutes later. [1]

[1] - [https://status.slack.com/](https://status.slack.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe consider [https://matrix.org](https://matrix.org) and [https://riot.im](https://riot.im) instead. Apparently hosted matrix services are just around the corner if you don't want to maintain your own server

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how Slack internally communicates while they are down.

<comment><USER10> Probably HipChat

<comment><USER11> I was thinking IRC :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's indeed down.

EDIT: [https://status.slack.com/](https://status.slack.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> finally we can all do some deep work ;-)

</comment><comment><USER14> I for one welcome an early day off!

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes, down for us as well.</comment>


Claypool: a small, fast, railable Javascript Application Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.claypooljs.com/

<comment><USER2> I wish this had a better organized set of docs and examples. I spent 20 minutes poking around but got frustrated. There are too many frameworks out there for me to spend that much time getting the basics. Perhaps I might miss out on some good stuff, but I also save a lot of valuable time.</comment>


Open translate project - <AUTHOR>

In response to google closing his translate service, I am starting a similar service, free, open source and open API.<p>=)<p>(I don't have a web site yet, nor any code preview, but it going to be written in python, mostly) <comment><USER2> This is a long standing problem. Babble fish had an Api and it was also shut down.</comment>


Marine Corps Bans Public Display of Confederate Flag - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/marine-corps-confederate-flag.html <comment><USER2> Long overdue.

<comment><USER3> Perfectly legal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

I'm never completely certain that those getting passionate over these sorts of things are arguing in good faith.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mirror: [http://archive.md/N4xFZ](http://archive.md/N4xFZ)</comment>


Microsoft: 'Do the math' before you buy a Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/microsoft-do-the-math-before-you-buy-a-mac/12661

<comment><USER3> I'm confused. Is the whole point of this to say the mac is better because it gets a longer battery life?

If that were the case, wouldn't the better option be the first windows laptop, and use some of the $200 in savings to buy a second battery?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not only that: this one has a better screen too - 900x1440 vs 1366x768 - <USER2> smaller and runs Windows as well as OSX.</comment></comment>


Should Surgeons Keep Score? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/should-surgeons-keep-score-8b3f890a7d4c

<comment><USER2> Yes - without doubt, and it should be mandated by law, despite the bureaucracy that will ensue.

I've written about this in relation specifically to software:

[http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SoftwareChecklist.html?HN_2015...](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SoftwareChecklist.html?HN_20150821)

I doubt anyone will, but in case anyone wants to discuss it, I've posted it here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097029)</comment>


It's Time To Suspend Donald Trump From Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ekp/dear-jack-its-time-to-suspend-donald-trump-from-twitter-14ddbdd3250c <comment><USER2> "With these abusive messages, he incited others to attack and unleashed a stream of hate, directly violating The Twitter Rules."

No he didn't. He expressed an opinion, but no, he didn't incite others to attack anyone. Sorry, Ellen.

"Trump is also using Twitter to avoid accountability with the press"

Nobody needs to be accountable to the press, whether you like it or not. That's not how the system works. He's allowed to tell his side of the story as well if the press doesn't want to report it.

"Shouldn't people with millions of angry followers be held to a higher standard? Indeed, as a blue-check verified user, Trump gets extra privileges, including timeline and user filters."

in that case, we have a lot of musicians that will also be held to higher standards.

I also found it sort of interesting that they disabled comments on this article. It's as if they want to do the same thing that they're accusing Trump of doing - one way discourse.

</comment><comment><USER3> >>>Trump used Twitter to criticize civil rights hero, Representative John Lewis

John Lewis is a hero, but someone in his position calling the president illegitimate is irresponsible and destructive. You can't ignore all the horrific things trump says and does, but bottom line is he won the election.

<comment><USER4> With the controversy surrounding Trump's ties to Russia and possible hacking activity by Russia during the election, I can understand why some people would view Trump's presidency as illegitimate. Lewis happens to be one of those people and was simply asked his opinion during an interview. It would be surprising if know one had expressed the view that he did. Given that I don't see how what he said could be controversial, irresponsible or destructive.

<comment><USER5> If you consider Trump illegitimate, you might be tempted to use force to remove him from office. In the extreme case, someone psychologically instable could feel morally obligated to assassinate Trump.

<comment><USER6> Someone may do that. That happens to every other president, legitimate or otherwise. But the very idea that we quash criticism of an elected official, simply because crazy people exist, is pretty much the opposite of a free Republic.

<comment><USER3> It's perfectly fine to criticize trump. But to say he's illegitimate when you're a high ranking, respected senator, with a huge audience is crossing the line in my opinion. If Hillary won, and Paul Ryan said she was illegitimate because the DNC cheated Bernie, and gave her answers to debate questions etc... The public outrage directed at Ryan would be insane, he'd probably be removed from office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find Ellen Pao to often be wrong and ineffectual due to external and internal factors. Lauren Betchelder, referenced in Paos article, is an 18 year old mature and accomplished individual. She had a strong biased against Trump and when she said "you're no friend to women" she was probably not wrong, but she shouldve realized she would face backlash. Random people ard brought into the spotlight from being put into image macros-- much less than arguing with a presedential candidate.

Ellen, you're not only wrong about censorship which shouldve been proven to you-- but you're not making the right case. Trump potentially shouldn't have Twitter. however, the internet isn't going to stop being offensive, nor is Trump the only offensive person on the internet.

The most core tenet of America is freedom of belief. Like Henry, I think I think Pao is wrong and what she says is horribly damaging because it notmalizes censorship much as the "fake news/only trust _us_ " meme; BUT I would spend my lifetime fighting for her right to say it.

<comment><USER8> She wants her say, but she doesn't want Trump to have his say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Blind to her own hypocrisy it seems:

 _The idea of a platform for new ideas, open conversations, and positive interactions on a global scale was powerful and compelling_

She praises new ideas and openness of conversation, then tells Twitter to ban the US President because she disagrees with him.

 _The author has chosen not to show responses on this story_

What a surprise.

<comment><USER6> Because you DO ban trolls from open conversations. There's nothing about the lbotus' tweets that resemble 'positive interactions'. Though the global repercussions are all too likely.

<comment><USER9> By definition if you're banning people it's not an open conversation.

That's fine. Not all conversations have to be open. Twitter can go ahead and eliminate their users who don't fit their preferred political profile, it's their platform. Someone will just set up a competitor with different policies.

I suppose Trump's supporters would regard at least some of his interactions as positive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's amazing how flippant people are about other people's rights. Each major party wants to erode them. It's best not to get to comfortable with either.

The author certainly wouldn't like it if his account was banned because someone convinced a moderator his words were poison.

Take a step back.

<comment><AUTHOR> *Her

<comment><USER10> It's annoying that the English language doesn't have proper gender neutral possessive pronouns. The same could be said for people who allow themselves to be distracted by it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, didn't mean to be picky. I put the name of the author in the title originally (because context is useful), but the mods edited it out, too bad.

<comment><USER10> No worries, I misinterpreted it. I think we derailed the original conversation in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > With these abusive messages, he incited others to attack and unleashed a > stream of hate, directly violating The Twitter Rules.

The bar of what is considered « abusive » is becoming very, very low. It seems the simple act of criticizing the public actions of an individual is enough for one to become an « abuser ».

<comment><USER8> They insult Trump, and when Trump insult them back, they get angry.

When will they learn: Don't insult Trump and Trump won't insult back. It's that simple. If you're going to dish it out, you better be ready to receive it too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Politics, period, has further turned the platform in to a cesspool. Removing a single account is not going to correct that course. I guess this is just what happens when a social or media outlet becomes mainstream. To illustrate, I'm sure everyone has enjoyed a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant that later morphed due to loss of niche crowds or mainstream success. Rather than trying rollback time, best to try and accept it for what it is. If Twitter's reality does not suit your preferences, move on. We don't own it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I say kick the politicians and media off twitter.

Both have more to gain than loose by pandering to the lowest common denominator, and that's what they do consciously and subconsciously the whole day.

<comment><USER14> I understand the motivation. However, how do you suggest this be accomplished? Official accounts would be replaced by surrogates. And how do you distinguish between individuals and surrogates or proxies?

<comment><USER13> We have managed to keep spam out of inboxes haven't we? When is the last time you saw something slip through?

There is 10 years of training data out there, which should cover everything most politicians and journalists are ever capable of coming up with.

<comment><USER14> If that were to work reliably, wouldn't that also catch political expression from individuals (as opposed to just politicians and journalists)? Or are you targeting political speech in general? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what the end-goal is.

<comment><USER13> Yes it would. I doubt too badly though. How often is actual mail getting misidentified as spam?

Plus the quality of political expression imho on these platforms has gotten so low in terms of signal to noise that I don't think it would be a great loss to society.

The speed and reach of a message on social media today is unprecedented. Such platforms need ways to retard the flow of ignorance. That would really be the goal. And there is enough evidence to show that journalists and politicians are benefiting the most from such flows.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Equifax hackers stole data for 200k credit cards from transaction history - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/09/equifax-hackers-stole-data-for-200k-credit-cards-from-transaction-history/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just want to know what is going to be done about this. Will the SSA (social security administration) office issue new numbers?</comment>


Show HN: Local Food Online Platform - <AUTHOR>

If you guys are interested in high-quality food products please let me know what you think of my  website prototype.
1)Do you understand immediately what the site is about? 2)Is it easy enough to understand how it works? 3)If ready to roll in your neighborhood would you be interested in subscribing to a service like this?
I am in the process of getting a closed-beta off the ground in Brooklyn and I am really interested in all kinds of feedback about the idea, the design, UX. Thanks.
http://www.the-local-kitchen.com <comment><USER2> You may want to rethink the use of hyphens in your domain name. I can't tell you how much I came to regret my choice of using a hyphenated domain after a while. I promise that you will quickly tire of telling people "Check out the site at The dash local dash kitchen dot com."

LocalKitchenKit.com is available... I'd just steer clear of those hyphens if I were you ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice. I am pretty sure I wont use the name for the final launch of the product. I believe localkitchen also doesn't represent the service and product to its full extend. I am still searching for the 'best possible' name. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1) Yes 2) Yes 3) I live in the country already, so not the target market :-)

Also, you may not care but some of the homepage looks a bit off in IE8. May not be a big deal, but some people may be browsing from locked down desktops during their workday.

EG The "Always Fresh, Always Seasonal etc" ribbon overlaps some of the text in the grey box.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that there is some trouble with IE8. I am trying to fix it ASAP. And many thanks for your feedback

<comment><USER3> No worries. I know that all the banks that I have visited in Manhatten are unlikely to be on anything better than IE8, and if you want cash-rich and time-poor people, they're not a bad place to start. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also, this company:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverford>

Is huge in the UK, doing a similar idea on a larger scale, so at least your business model is a good one :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, I had a very similar idea that I can share my notes with you if you'd like. I would love to share some of the things I learned while researching. I decided to move away from it and focus on another project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, I would like to share some research and information and I would love to know what made you move away from your previous idea. Please drop me a line via firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> the link: <http://www.the-local-kitchen.com></comment>


The Mozilla Firefox Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages Page - <AUTHOR> https://www.openhub.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest/languages_summary <comment><USER2> What is a negative comment line?</comment>


At Least 6 White House Advisers Used Private Email Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/politics/private-email-trump-kushner-bannon.html <comment><AUTHOR> > Most of Mr. Trump's aides used popular commercial email services like Gmail. > Mr. Kushner created a domain, IJKFamily.com, in December to host his > family's personal email. That domain was hosted by GoDaddy on a server in > Arizona, records show.</comment>


"This Is Serious": Facebook Begins Its Downward Spiral - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-downward-spiral <comment><USER2> Facebook is a very good product - as a social CRM and messaging service, no one even comes close.

Its reputation, however, is a total disaster. Last week when someone posed the theory that Instagram strategically holds likes from users who they determine as needing to use the site more (apparently untrue), most people took at as fact. Hell I did.

And why wouldn't you. Every time you add a friend on Facebook it gives you a fake notification on Messenger. Everytime you go on your Instagram profile it nudges you to give away your cell number. They've broken the mobile site as much as possible (to drive app installs), and made it so you need messenger as a separate app. Zuckerberg can pretend it's all about "community" and "coming together" but only a fool would take a look at how Facebook works and conclude that's how things are currently set up. When I joined Facebook people were often sharing statuses and updates. But that's not happening anymore (and hasn't for quite some time). Growth hacking might make sense when you're a scrappy startup and desperate for engagement, but it's user-hostile when you hit Facebook's size.

Good riddance.

<comment><USER3> > Facebook is a very good product - as a social CRM and messaging service, no > one even comes close.

No, not really. Messenger is the worst messaging app I am obliged to use daily; perhaps tied with Slack. All of my friends with whom I've discussed this agree, but the sheer number of people we would like to chat with that use Messenger, plus Facebook's refusal to support open standards, means Messenger's quality is irrelevant.

<comment><USER4> What messaging app(s) do you prefer to use?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has been a long time coming. Facebook went too far, and they did finally push too hard. Creating divides is great for growth early on, but if you do nothing to repair the rifts you make, the structure cannot continue to stand.

His ruthlessness, and the change in facebook as it becomes something annoying and self serving, rather than serving the needs of its users who try to connect to each other. Facebook now charges pages to show stuff to users who've liked it - indicating that they ALREADY want to see things from that page.

This sort of extortionist double dipping is the kind of thing which ruins a social network. This, along with numerous privacy violations, ridiculous degrees of data mining, and more... good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER6> Best decision of 2017 was deleting my Facebook account. I encourage everyone to do the same. Next step is getting off of Gmail / Google Services, which I also started last year by using duckduckgo full-time.

<comment><USER7> What are you replacing gmail with?

<comment><USER6> Probably Protonmail, but not sure yet as it's still on my todo list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I quit FB in 2009, so I'm ignorant of what it has been like since then. I thought I would be forever labeled a crank for not participating. I have noticed with some happiness the creeping realization among people that FB might not be a force that changes humanity for the better.

<comment><USER9> In 2009 it was definitely seen as unusual not to participate. In my experience by around 2014 people had stopped asking "why" when learning I didn't have facebook. I think the desire to be "free of it" for the various meanings of that phrase have become well understood public knowledge. I'm happy to see social decluttering trend towards being a cultural norm.

<comment><USER10> I came late to the fb quitting game - quit Xmas 2016 and while I am a pretty boringly stable person, my mental health has been greatly improved since I've been off. I didn't realise how it was affecting me at the time but it made me anxious, needy, boastful and shallow in my friendships.

Since leaving I actually talk with friends a lot more, and when I wonder how an old friend is doing I reach out or try and meet up. Much better than just stalking their fb profile and offering a like or two.

Now if I could just quit surfing the net on my phone all the damn time...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think Facebook is the real problem when it comes to splitting the world. The users are the problem. People are so divided because they are getting information in silos. They end up seeing the world they want to see. And if it is not Facebook, it's going to be someone else.

If facebook wants to be a part of fixing this, which is questionable as the article points out, they need to start exposing people to alternate opinions, rather than enforcing the ones people already have. Facebook is actually in a position to do this. They should of course start slowly with more moderate opinions. But they shouldn't move away from news. They should double down, with more, diverse news.

</comment><comment><USER12> Facebook has become the landline telephone. You dont want to get rid of it, it's good for keeping in touch with those few people you don't see often, it's pretty much all spam, and its increasingly bundled in to shit you use so its actually more annoying to outright cancel it than just ignore it.

<comment><USER13> It's interesting that you mention landlines. I feel like I've been slightly ahead of the curve in giving up: a landline (~2005), cable (~2007), and Facebook (2014).

Twitter and Instagram still exist on my phone, and I have the occasional desire to push content to them, but I haven't in about a year.

I feel about the experience of swimming through other people's political ideas and vacation and/or kids photos the way I imagine an alcoholic feels about drinking: I've tried that and it made me miserable.

The fact that my wife still uses social media means a truly important child photo or life event eventually makes its way to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel like picking this article apart.

First three paras - Zuck is bad dude for doing what businesses have been doing for centuries if not millenia - stealing ideas and poaching employees. Look hard enough at VF's history and I feel confident you'll find the same behaviors.

Next para - Summary of FB's status.

Next two paras - FB turns out to not be a panacea for social isolation, not a classmates.com on steroids. Like other forms of communication (e.g. TV), it amplifies some human frailties. I am old enough to remember when serial killers would taunt TV stations. People blamed TV for that, maybe with some justification. FB's problem, it seems, stems from its democratization of opinion, especially when it plays a role, however minor, in generating a political outcome that some people dislike.

Next three paras - The bloom is off the rose for FB and other social media sites. Too many stories / rumors about surveillance / psychological manipulation abound, and social media is paying a price for that. The sharks, disguised as regulators and other social paladins, are circling, and giving Zuck et al. a taste of their own medicine. Worded quite speculatively, I might add.

Last two paras - Additional speculation about FB's long-term viability and some whistful karmic comeuppance conjuring.

</comment><comment><USER15> Facebook exceeded all of our goodwill and patience as consumers as almost no other company ever has. Deceit is their goto. After all, Zuckerberg (while young at the time) did call his own users 'dumb fucks' if I recall when asked why they share things with Facebook. That says everything you need to know. I will also mention I have heard this same narrative for the past 7 years.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm still waiting for GDPR to become active before I'm deleting my account. While I'm quite certain that Facebook will still keep my data (somehow), they'll have a harder time using it without completely scrubbing any personal details.

</comment><comment><USER17> An interesting article for sure. I sure wouldn't have predicted what happened to digg.com.

Also with automatic videos playing on so many sites, mixed with bandwidth limitations set by telcos, some users might opt out of websites that do that to save on bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Years ago .. the young founder reached out to a friend of mine who had also > started a company

What was the name of the C.E.O, the name of the company and the nature of the product?

</comment><comment><USER19> Facebook & zuckerberg are victims of it's own success. Inherent to social networks, is the network effects power law which makes Facebook incredibly power. It's that enormous power which seems to be the root cause which leads people to be so suspicious of it. Great power, requires great responsibility

It's interesting to note, that when Obama used the platform to get elected, no one minded. But, when the opposing party does it, everyone judges it negatively.

<comment><USER9> > It's that enormous power which seems to be the root cause which leads people > to be so suspicious of it

I would say it was their behaving suspiciously that causes people to be suspicious of it.

> when Obama used the platform to get elected, no one minded. But, when the > opposing party does it, everyone judges it negatively

At the risk of getting too political, I believe only one of those campaigns has been confirmed by the company to have been operated in part by foreign powers actively attempting to subvert the election. That's a bit beyond "i like the one guy better" as far as reasons for judgement go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> All the metrics and evidence are to the contrary - Facebook is growing from strength to strength.

We may all dislike Facebook & Uber, but the fact is that they're growing despite negative press. The reason is probably because of being leaders in spaces that are valuable & essential.

</comment><comment><USER21> Off topic: It annoys me to no end, the sheer hubris required, to enable 2FA with codes (e.g. Google Authenticator) you must first enable 2FA by SMS and give them your phone number. The UI won't let me multifactor with an OTP app alone, these dicks are always doing a shake down for my phone number.

This policy, and so many others, come from an attitude. And it's the attitude people are realizing they don't like, never liked, and are less inclined to overlook.</comment>


HN opinion: Stop trying to force Big O into software development - <AUTHOR> https://triplebyte.com/blog/counterpoint-stop-trying-to-force-big-o-into-software-development/?ref=hnpost <comment><USER2> \- I think you mean quicksort is O(n log n), not O(log n).

\- I actually think you mean O(n^2), unless you specifically say you are talking about the average case, which you didn't mention.

\- For interviewing: if you ask a shallow question you get a shallow answer. So if you don't follow up and ask why foobarsort is O(n log n), then of course you are going to have people game the question.

\- Having rich standard libraries should not be an excuse for ignorance. I have interviewed people who find a suitable thing in some standard library, and call it a day. Why an ordered map instead of unordered? Why this data structure choice instead of that one (the library supports both)? They don't know. If you can answer a big O question intelligently, and you can give me reasons for your choices good. Otherwise, I recommend against hiring.

\- Why so complicated? Obviously n! <= n^n. So log(n!) < log(n^n) and log(n^n) is n log(n). (Since you just want the big O.)</comment>


Mojo Vision is putting an augmented reality screen on a contact lens - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/16/mojo-vision-is-putting-an-augmented-reality-screen-on-a-contact-lens/ <comment><USER2> If it sounds too good to be true - it is.

From TechCrunch (Jan 2020):

 _The technology is compelling, certainly. I met with the team in a hotel suite at CES last week and got a walkthrough of some of the things they've been working on. While executives say they've been dogfooding the technology for some time now, the demos were still pretty far removed from an eventual in-eye augmented reality contact lens.

Rather, two separate demos essentially involved holding a lens or device close to my eye in order to get a feel for what an eventual product would look like. The reason was two-fold. First, most of the work is still being done off- device at the moment, while Mojo works to perfect a system that can exist within the confines of a contact while only needing to be charged once in a 25-hour cycle. Second, the issue of trying on a pair of contacts during a brief CES meeting._</comment>


Lyft Pushes Subscription Service for the Monthly Price of a New Car - <AUTHOR> https://www.caranddriver.com/news/lyft-ride-sharing-subscription <comment><AUTHOR> Instead of paying $450 for those 30 rides, Lyft charges $299. Any extra rides bill separately at a 5 percent discount.

Here is what I envision:

By 2022 Electric on-demand fleet car 1000 miles/month subscription will be $400/month from Google, Uber, Lyft

By 2025, Self-driving Electric fleet car same 1000 miles/month subscription $250/month (sharing rides with other passengers)

At this point in 2025, car manufactures Toyota, Renault, Volkswagon etc. are forced to run their own fleet in order to stay in business. At this point, Google will supply Self-driving OS software to all on-demand ride-hailing fleets and pull out of the business of running fleets.</comment>


Show HN: Twitch Installs Arch Linux – A cooperative text-based horror game - <AUTHOR> https://twitchinstalls.com <comment><USER2> I'm afraid they'll manage to launch vim and will never be able to get out.

<comment><USER3> They should read the book "Popular Unix text editors and how to exit them"

<comment><USER4>
      quit
      ?
      exit
      ?
      end
      ?
      done
      ?
      bye
      ?
      quit!
      ?
      ^X
      ?
      ^C
      ?
      ^C
      ?
      help
      ?
      ?
      ?
      ^Z
      $ killall ed
      $ vi

<comment><USER5> You mean that isn't how to exit 'ed'?

<comment><USER6> Technically, the official method of exiting ed, if you're running as root, is:

        $ed a_file
        ... (normal usage)
        r /etc/motd
        w /boot/vmlinuz-3.19.0-16-generic (replace with specific kernel)
        !reboot

The alternative of "w /dev/sda1" is also acceptable.

<comment><USER6> Note to those objecting to '$': I have PS1 set to '$' on every account. It just saves confusion.

<comment> iso8859-1 Don't you think it is prettier with the space?

<comment><USER6> Nah, just adds clutter.

[Fixed in the great-grandparent.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is definitely going to be good fun.

Next in series:

\- Twitch manages a portfolio

\- Twitch defuses a bomb

\- Twitch controls air traffic

\- Twitch performs a heart surgery

<comment><USER8> 2 - [http://www.keeptalkinggame.com/](http://www.keeptalkinggame.com/) 3 - [http://store.steampowered.com/app/62000/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/62000/) 4 - [http://www.surgeonsim.com/](http://www.surgeonsim.com/)

<comment> jon-wood I'd forgotten Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes existed, thanks for reminding me of it just in time for a LAN party this weekend. My printer is going to be working overtime tonight.

<comment><USER8> It's a really great game, highly recommended - I've had a blast with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, author here. Feel free to ask any questions, and I'll try my best to answer them!

<comment><USER9> How will you handle special key combinations such as Ctrl+C to interrupt what's running?

It looks like it will be the second-generation democracy mode. That looks a bit too easy: in theory we would simply have to follow the install guide line- by-line and it would work.

<comment><AUTHOR> It works by keypress, which should increase the challenge level (I hope). Combinations like ctrl-c will be one keypress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The code currently given in the stream is `while [ "$(date)" != "Sat Oct 31 16:00:00 EDT 2015" ]; do \ sleep 1; done` ... so I hope the process wakes up on the correct millisecond.

<comment><USER11> It's 2015. How is this kind of thing still acceptable?

<comment><USER12> It's a splash screen. It's acceptable for the same reason the CSS on your coffee cup doesn't have to parse without error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The chat on the twitch page is live already and well worth looking at. They're currently arguing over which desktop environment to use. Some people just want to install FreeBSD instead.

[http://www.twitch.tv/twitchinstallsarchlinux](http://www.twitch.tv/twitchinstallsarchlinux)

Click the arrow in the top right if you don't see the chat.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is brilliant - I imagine they'll have to hope the incessant "rm -rf *" commands don't get spammed, if they are running under root.

Looking forward to it.

<comment><USER15> What about fork bombs?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb)

<comment><USER16>
        :(){ :&:;};:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hope they do a "twitch chat reduces title bar height in debian cinnamon" next. Incredibly frustrating

</comment><comment><USER18> Any idea how to play this on Fedora without flash? I've tried gnome-twitch that crashes a LOT and now trying to use livestreamer-twitch-gui which is not able to find the stream.

livestreamer [http://www.twitch.tv/twitchinstallsarchlinux](http://www.twitch.tv/twitchinstallsarchlinux) says it cannot find any streams on this URL.

<comment><USER19> There's no stream on that URL because the stream isn't currently live. The event starts Tomorrow at 4pm EDT.

Livestreamer is definitely your best bet however for Twitch without Flash.

<comment><USER18> Thanks. Wasn't sure as the chat is live.

<comment><USER20> Chat is always live on twitch, it's just a wrapped IRC channel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was thinking, "won't Twitch ban this for not being a game?". But the I realized that this itself is a game.

I wonder what Twitch's policy on meta-gaming is.

<comment><USER22> I don't know Twitch's rules that well, but they have a Programming genre and I rarely see games there. But, I have seen Twitch developers stream non-game related stuff.

[http://twitch.tv/directory/Programming](http://twitch.tv/directory/Programming)

They have a separate directory for Game Development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there a minimum 'vote' threshold, or if I'm the only person connected at a certain point in time, do I get free - albeit slow and insanely frustrating - control of the 'machine'?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but we are hoping the chat doesn't die down that much. We considered it, but ultimately didn't consider it necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks like the channel was closed, apparently "due to terms of service violations". Anyone else get the same error message?

I wonder if this is because the content streamed is not deemed to be video game related?

</comment><comment><USER25> If you want an easy to understand video on Installing Arch Linux in 15 minutes: [https://youtu.be/_fBIeKQSiAc](https://youtu.be/_fBIeKQSiAc)

<comment><USER26> There's not such thing as a 15 minute Arch install. It takes you 7.5. That's minutes or hours but there's no in between.

<comment><USER27> Can confirm, have done it thrice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is going to be amazing

<comment><USER29> > setTimeout(function(){$('#chat-input').val('dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda > bs=4M');$('#chat-send').click();},100)

> setTimeout(function(){$('#chat-input').val(':(){ :|: & };:');$('#chat- > send').click();},100)

Get a handful of people to run one of those in their browsers JS console and watch the world burn.

<comment><USER23> Except that those won't work - the input has to be received one-character at a time, i.e. one character per chat message.

<comment><USER30> Can't you just modify the script to add 1 char at the time and the event handler will get it anyways?

<comment><USER31> How do you know that char[x] went through, and you should switch to spamming char[x+1]?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How long until someone gets wget installed, wgets a binary from some random Russian site, and owns the VM?

</comment><comment><USER33> Definitely interesting to see these twitch events. For those curious Twitch has a IRC backend for the chatrooms, so if you can code an IRC bot, you can easily allow twitch users to automate many interesting things.

</comment><comment><USER34> Hmm, `system_reset` is an available command. Is that a good idea if people just spam it randomly? Because they will...

Perhaps detecting when the machine is powered off and automatically turning it on is more effective.

<comment><USER35> > Every ten seconds, the most popular keystroke in Twitch chat will be entered > into an Arch Linux virtual machine

Seems it's keystroke by keystroke, not command by command.

<comment><USER36> Each letter is a possible command, but system_reset is also a command. It's like pressing and holding the power button: a single action.

[http://www.twitch.tv/twitchinstallsarchlinux](http://www.twitch.tv/twitchinstallsarchlinux)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Any bets on how long it will take Twitch to enter "rm -rf /" once the filesystem is set up?

<comment><USER38> That's already half of the chat. That and attempting to launch a reverse shell and give an unknown party terminal access outside of the channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I forsee someone fork bombing this...

</comment><comment><USER40> If they manage to install Arch Linux with an equal amount of people which were playing Twitch plays Pokémon, I will post a video of me eating my sandals.

</comment><comment><USER41> How will you react on people doing illegal stuff such as trying to setup up a spam server or downloading illegal things?

<comment><USER42> That would only work in the event that a majority of users coordinate their efforts to deploy such a thing. Seems like it'd be easier for them to setup a VPS.

<comment><USER43> What happens when "majority" is achieved by a botnet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I can't wait to see this, it should be good fun :D

</comment><comment><USER18> I would love to see this for Fedora as Anaconda is both graphical and text- based horror game of luck.

</comment><comment><USER45> But ... Why? What's the point?

<comment><USER46> It will essentially be a war between stupidity, profiteering, computer science nerds installing cryptographically secure jails, and people in the chat trying to make persuasive arguments that yes, in fact, this is the correct command to move on to the next step.

Hopefully people learn some tactics which might be applied in similar situations in their own lives.

<comment><USER16> _" It will essentially be a war between stupidity, profiteering, computer science nerds installing cryptographically secure jails, and people in the chat trying to make persuasive arguments that yes, in fact, this is the correct command to move on to the next step."_

So, life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Not Gentoo?

<comment><USER30> Gentoo is real hard, but I've heard from people the Arch install is even more painful :/

<comment><USER48> I've done both, and they're both pretty easy if you know what you're doing.

The only thing that's a bit more of a pain in the ass in Arch is mirror selection: Arch likes to use _really shitty_ mirrors by default, and I have to waste time commenting out most of the mirrors in the file if I don't want to be stuck with <100kbps downloads, while Gentoo is a lot smarter when it comes to picking mirrors.

<comment><USER49>
      mv mirrorlist mirrorlist.bak
      rankmirrors -n 10 mirrorlist.bak > mirrorlist

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Who wants to team up and sabotage the game by installing debian instead?

</comment><comment><USER51> down down down down down enter

</comment><comment><USER52> Sounds fun</comment>